Drawing on cutting-edge advances in population genetics, archaeology, palaeontology and neuroscience, Transcendence compels us to reimagine ourselves, showing us to be on the brink of something grander – and potentially more destructive. Vince shows how our four evolutionary drivers – Fire, Language, Beauty and Time – are further transforming our species into a superorganism: a hyper-cooperative mass of humanity that she calls Homo omnis, or ‘Homni’.

In 1965, while extending his cellar, a farmer hit the first of the ancient bones. It is our collective culture, rather than our individual intelligence, that makes humans unique. In a pile of mammoth bones locked beneath the Ukrainian soil lay everything that made humans special. Unlike any other species on earth we determine the course of our own destiny, something that she argues rests on a special relationship between our genes, environment and culture going back into deep time. Setting out to answer this question, Gaia Vince retells our evolution story. What are we then? And now we have remade the world, what are we becoming? In Transcendence, Gaia Vince argues that modern humans are the product of a nuanced coevolution of our genes, environment, and culture that goes back into deep time. Meanwhile, our closest living relatives, the now-endangered chimpanzees, continue to live as they have for millions of years. Humans are the most successful species on Earth a planet-altering force of nature.

Transcendence by Gaia Vince